La La Land Crafts Inspiration Friday!

oHi everyone and welcome to another Inspiration Friday with the La La Land Crafts design team! We have a super fun theme to play with this week -- recycle or alter something! Well... you know me and my LOVE of altering things! But I decided to take a different route this time and play with the "recycle" theme! ❤

How many of you (like me) just love to do online shopping for scrapbooking "stuff"... so much so that the empty USPS boxes start piling up on the side of your craftroom?? LOL! Well, that's me alright! So as I was thinking about what I was going to recycle on my project, it dawned on me when I turned my head and saw the stack of empty USPS boxes in my room! My project incorporates the corrugated cardboard that the USPS boxes are made of!

For fun, I decided to do a little pic-tutorial showing you how I prepped the corrugated cardboard for my card. I also walk you through a few steps showing how I paper-pieced little Sitting Luka. So grab your coffee, sit back and enjoy the read! ❤

First a peek at Sitting Luka... too adorable for words, isn't he? He SO reminds me of my 4 year old, in every way! ❤

Prepping the corrugated cardboard from the USPS box...

I tore a piece of the cardboard off the side panels of a USPS Priority shipping box.

Here's a peek at how I tore the cardboard to expose the corrugation. I like to keep some of the corrugation hidden randomly -- I love that "distressed" look!

I applied some white acrylic paint with a paint brush, and lightly brushed the paint over the corrugation. Keep painting until you get the coverage that suits your liking. I prefer to keep some of the craft color of the chipboard peeking through. Set aside to dry. (Not shown here, but I edged the piece of recycled corrugated chipboard with Ranger Distress Ink in Black Soot after painting.)

Paper piecing Sitting Luka...

I grabbed my Portebello Road papers by My Minds Eye, Sitting Luka, Momento Tuxedo Black ink and a piece of PaperTrey Ink white cardstock. I stamped Luka onto the PTI cardstock...

I cut small pieces from the design papers, just the right size to stamp the image (or part of the image) I intend to paper piece. In the case below, I wanted to paper piece a part of Luka's ball cap and his t-shirt...

Here's what it looks like after stamping...

I used different sheets of design paper to cover different parts of Luka's outfit: his hat, t-shirt, shirt, jeans, shoes, etc.)

Stamp all the pieces you need to use to cover up parts of your image...

Here's what I stamped up so far...

Now to start cutting! I like to use my EK Success fine tip precision scissors when paper piecing (not pictured). These scissors take corners like you wouldn't believe -- I LOVE them! ❤
Here I cut out Luka's hat...

I decided to make Luka's hat 2-tone so I cut out pieces of the hat from another stamped image, then adhered it down using my 3-way Zig glue pen...

Here's what all the pieces looked like before I started adhering them down on Luka using my 3-way Zig glue pen. Oh, and I got the little man colored up too using my Copic markers (colors included in the pic below.)

Viola! Here is my finished, handsome little Luka (with his twin from the stamp packaging hehe!)

 Here are more pictures of the final card...

Copic markers:

Skin: E000, E00, E21, E11, BV00

Hair: C3, C5, C7, C9

Shirt buttons/Shoe laces/Button on cap: T6

 Well... I hope you enjoyed that little tutorial and I thank you for stopping by to check out today's project! Be sure to stop by the La La Land Crafts blog to see what the other designers created for you today AND to learn more about how you can participate in this week's challenge to win some goodies from LLLC!

hugs! ❤

Other products used on this project:

Paper Trey Ink craft cardstock, black cardstock

MFT Die-Namics: Tag, Postage Frame, Banner, Fishtail banner

EK Success Ornate Punch

Black May Arts twine